But what about elsewhere — countries and regions outside North America? What is the state of their embodied carbon data availability? How is that data being used today? How can project teams use the available data to inform procurement decisions? Do we have what we’d need to develop CLF Material Baselines outside North America? 

This month, we publish a new report that looks at these questions and more: International Embodied Carbon Data Availability: A Review of Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) Availability in Europe, China, and Australia. We compiled and analyzed EPD data for dozens of construction product types from five key global regions, and interviewed 35 professionals from around the world. Today, we’re sharing our methods, findings, and recommendations. 

We keep learning — this step outside North America was mostly new terrain for us. I hope you keep learning as well.

International Embodied Carbon Data Availability: 

A Review of Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) Availability in Europe, China, and Australia

Embodied carbon data is critical for project teams to measure and reduce the emissions of their buildings to meet company targets, green building certification requirements, and policy requirements.

Environmental product declarations (EPDs) report the embodied carbon and other environmental impacts of a product based on a life cycle assessment (LCA). EPD results are used in building analyses as emission factors for individual products and in procurement to compare the impacts of two functionally equivalent products. Product-specific EPDs are also sometimes compared against product-level embodied carbon — global warming potential (GWP) — targets or limits set in policy or project specifications to ensure products meet a minimum threshold for embodied carbon performance. 

Product-level GWP limits establish a maximum embodied carbon value per unit for construction materials and are often based on product-level baseline GWP values. Carbon Leadership Forum (CLF) publishes Material Baselines — product-level global warming potential (GWP) baselines for building materials based on product-level emissions intensity data available in EPDs. Owners and project teams often use CLF baseline values as product-scale GWP limits or targets, including them in the construction project specifications. Currently, CLF Material Baselines are only available for North American construction products.  

In summer 2025, CLF completed a landscape analysis of embodied carbon data availability in regions outside North America with the goals of:

• understanding how data availability varies globally;
• informing where targeted initiatives are needed to increase the availability of data; and
• determining whether adequate data exists to develop CLF Material Baselines outside North America.

This document summarizes our findings and provides initial insights into what data is available to inform low-carbon procurement efforts in Australia, China, and Europe.

Join a growing movement of researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and advocates working to decarbonize the building sector.

Ways to participate:

• Join the CLF Network – Connect with 10,000+ professionals worldwide

• Participate in regional CLF hubs

• Share or submit resources and case studies

• Attend CLF-hosted events and webinars

• Advocate for embodied carbon policies in your state

Your voice strengthens the community and accelerates progress.

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• The Carbon Leadership Forum accelerates transformation of the building sector to radically reduce the embodied carbon in building materials and construction.
• We pioneer research, create resources, foster cross-sector collaboration, and incubate member-led initiatives to bring embodied carbon emissions of buildings down to zero.
• We are architects, engineers, contractors, material suppliers, building owners, and policymakers who care about the future and take bold steps to eliminate embodied carbon from buildings and infrastructure.

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